Among the Poppies

by J'nell Ciesielski

  Halfway there. Halfway. Keep going.

  POP! POP! POP! POP!

  Gwyn shook her head, dislodging the water from her ears. Gunshots.

  William turned his head. “Keep going!”

  POP! POP! POP!

  Gwyn pushed harder. Her lungs burned. The tree line loomed closer and closer. Stay alive. Stay alive. Leaves slapped her face and branches tore at her clothes, but she kept going. An arm snaked around her waist and hauled her behind a tree. William’s breath was hot in her ear as he crushed her against the tree, covering her body with his. The dank mustiness of wet bark penetrated her nose as she drew in ragged breaths.

  William’s heart battered her back. “Are you hit?”

  She shook her head, incapable of drawing a simple breath to speak.

  “Anyone else hit?”

  “Farrow.” MacDonald huffed from two trees away.

  “Where is he?”

  MacDonald pointed back to the field. “Gone.”

  “How do you know?” One of the prisoners shouted. “Did you even see? We have to go back.”

  “Hole in the head. He’s gone.”

  “We can’t leave him. Me and him signed up together. I can’t tell his mum I left him rotting in a field while I ran for my life.”

  “You won’t be telling his mother anything if you leave these trees. It’s too dangerous. We press on,” William said.

  “I’m sick and tired of all you officers thinking you know what’s best. Your kind is what got me here in the first place.” The man sneered. “I decide from now on.”

  William pushed away from the tree and curled his fingers into fists. “You’ll stand down now, soldier.”

  “Let it go, Tindall.” The second prisoner held Tindall’s arm. “The Germans won’t let you step foot on that field.”

  Tindall yanked his arm away. “Some friend you are. Siding with the brass. I’ll do it myself.”

  William jumped to block him, but Tindall darted to the field with his friend hot on his heels.

  POP! POP!

  They crumpled to the ground three feet from where Farrow stared unseeing to the sky.

  MacDonald spat and cursed, but William’s face was stone, the straight lines of his shoulders harsh against the shivering branches around him. His eyes shifted to where Gwyn still clung to the tree. His hands unclenched. Only then did she see the dagger poised between his fingers.

  “Press on.” Slipping the knife into his belt, he grabbed Gwyn’s hand and pulled her further into the dense growth of trees.

  Hours seemed to pass as they slogged through the woods. Every rock and bush turned to a blur. They could be in Belgium or Timbuctoo for all she knew.

  “William.” He didn’t stop. “William.” She pulled on his hand.

  He turned his head. “We can’t stop.”

  Her toe caught a tree root. The same root she’d tripped over not long ago. “Why are we going in circles?”

  “To throw off the Germans if they try to follow us.” He held back a branch to keep it from snapping her face. “It’s too dark for them to start now, and the rain will have washed away our tracks, but come morning, they may try.”

  “Aye, but let’s hope they dinna turn loose the dogs,” MacDonald said, bringing up the rear. “Hate to get a nasty set of teeth in my a—em, coming from behind me.”

  On they trudged as darkness enveloped them. Gwyn gave up anticipating their path as she clutched William’s hand in her waterlogged one, letting him lead wherever his instinct took them. Soft drops of rain splatted against the canopy high above, dribbling to the leaves far below and adding to the muck wrapped around her boots. Every few steps, a drop splattered her cheek, but she didn’t bother wiping them away. Soaked to the bone, it was a useless waste of her rapidly depleting energy.

  Wet earth mingled with acrid powder as gunfire rumbled low in the distance. The battles continued their rage. On and on it went, never an end in sight. But it would have to come to an end. Who would be left standing? And if—God forbid—it wasn’t the British, then how would they ever get home? She’d have to learn French. It wasn’t a bad language, but her tongue did have trouble curling to the perfect—

  She smacked into William’s still back. “Ow! Oh, I’m sorry.” Gwyn rubbed her nose and peered around him.

  They’d reached the edge of the wood.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Where are we?”

  William moved closer to Gwyn, curling his fingers around hers. He pointed south to the sunken road cutting down the western border of the field. “Amiens is just over that hill. With luck on our side, we can skirt Albert and make the British lines in a day.”

  Her green eyes turned to him. Tiredness smudged under her lower lashes. “And if luck isn’t on our side?”

  “Then you’ll have a hurried lesson in low crawling.” He wrapped his other hand around their joined ones and squeezed. “For now, we’ll take advantage of this stream to refill the canteen.”

  “I might dunk my whole head in and wash off this filth.”

  “As long as you do it after we’ve filled the canteen. Can’t risk getting chatts in the drinking water.”

  “If I have chatts, I shudder to think what the rest of you have.”

  “We should keep pushing under this cover,” Roland said. Clouds blanketed the night sky, allowing only slivers of the moon and stars to peek through. “The further we can get away from what’s coming, the better.”

  “Fifteen minutes. We can all use it.” William rubbed the kinks from his hand with his thumb. Hours of holding Gwyn’s had left it feeling useless now that she’d let go. He glanced over to where she knelt on the grassy bank and splashed water over her face. “Anything to eat in that haversack you managed to snag, MacDonald?”

  Handing his rifle to Roland, MacDonald plopped down on the soggy ground and dug around in the bag. He pulled out a small tin of sausage and a few biscuits that looked like hardtack.

  “Guess they’re as bad off as we are, though we haven’t come to eating rocks.” MacDonald divided the shares and attempted to break off a piece of the biscuit with his teeth. “Need goat’s teeth to chomp through one of these bannocks.”

  William took his and Gwyn’s share and squatted next to her. “Here, you need to eat something.”

  Passing him the filled canteen, she pushed a strand of limp hair from her eyes and frowned at the dubious biscuit. “My stomach is so full of rainwater I’m sure that would sink straight to the bottom.”

  He handed her a sausage. “Give this a try first.”

  She chewed slowly and nodded. “This may be the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Sure beats the bowls of bully beef, but right now, I’d tuck into one with glee.”

  “A good chase will have you doing all sorts of odd things.” He gave half a laugh. A strange feeling considering the day they’d just escaped.

  She smiled, and the feeling no longer felt strange. It was right, sitting with her, longing to brush the damp tendrils from her cheek and kiss its smoothness. His thumb burned with the memory of caressing her lip. Warm and soft fullness, begging him to linger.

  “We shouldn’t linger,” she said.

  William’s thoughts reared. “I wasn’t.”

  “Captain Morrison is right. We should push on while we still have darkness.” Her smile faded. “I know you only stopped because of me.”

  “You can’t walk until your feet bleed.”

  “If there’s a goal, then I’m not stopping until we get there. I’ll deal with bleeding feet afterward. And don’t tell me you want to do a foot check.”

  William shoved the hardtack in his mouth and chewed as carefully as possible to keep his teeth in place. It’d been days since he’d last taken off his boots. Blistered and hot, his feet cried for release, but if he took off the covers now, there was no chance of getting those swollen, watered logs back in. “Not much point. We have no dry socks or whale’s paste to secure them.”

  “You certainly know how to turn a
girl’s head, Captain. Whale’s paste on a moonless night.”

  The hardtack stuck in his throat. Turn her head? With whale’s paste? Even he had to admit that was as unromantic as discussing rotting feet. Not that there was anything appalling about the paste—it had numerous benefits in the field—but if he did want to turn her head, what would he say? Moonlight and flowers sent the biscuit roiling in his stomach. Women expected those things, but Gwyn was unlike any woman he’d ever met. What would she expect?

  The biscuit turned sour. More expectations. More possibilities to disappoint. All he’d been good for—been trained for—was giving orders and carrying soldiers through them. Despite all his planning and mapping every decision, failure still flared. Like today. Three men lay dead in a field under his watch. He couldn’t even spare the honor of bringing their bodies back home.

  Surging to his feet, William stalked several feet away to two towering elm trees that had managed to avoid destruction. Faces of the dead boys—English, Irish, Welsh, French, and German— paraded across the field before him. Their ghostly march keeping time to the guilt pounding in his heart.

  “Have I said something?”

  Gwyn’s gentle voice pierced like nails as she stood behind him. He couldn’t even stop the failures from touching her. “Go back and rest. We’ll leave soon.”

  “Because we were laughing one minute, and the next … as if you’d thrown a bucket of freezing water on yourself.”

  He dug his fingers into a wet elm. Bark chipped beneath his nails. “This isn’t the time for laughter.”

  “If we can’t find something to smile about in the worst patch, then we’re doomed.”

  “You still feel like smiling after today?”

  Fallen leaves rustled as she shifted her footing. “Reason tells me no. This is one of the worst days of my life, but it’s become one of the best because I’m still alive.”

  “Not all of us lucked out, or has the war numbed you to the sight of death?”

  “No, but I try not to vent my frustration on those around me. What happened today was not your fault.”

  “It’s my duty to get my men—all of my men—to safety.”

  “Those bullets could have hit any one of us. It could be me in that field, or you. You led us from that pit, and that’s what matters. With even one life saved, today was not a failure.”

  He hooked his thumb beneath a chunk of bark and ripped it off. “Failure is in the eye of the beholder.”

  She stepped in front of him, close enough to search his face. “Why do you give yourself so little credit? The war is not yours to bear alone.”

  “And you think you should have a share in its weight? Think you can bear it?” He shook his head. The conviction in her eyes burned him to the core, but not in the way she intended. “Naivety does not become you, Gwyn.”

  “Nor does shortsightedness flatter you.” She plunked her hands on her hips. “I may have been stuck above a garage my whole life, but it hasn’t left me immune to hardship.”

  “Women’s rights and petticoats hardly compare to this.”

  “We each have our own battles to fight, but you know what I think, Captain Crawford? I think you’re upset that I’ve infiltrated your precious ranks of brotherhood.”

  “So you have. Is it the adventure you hoped for?”

  “At least I’m not too scared to venture from safety and try something new instead of staying where everyone expects me to.” Her words hit him like a two-ton mortar, imploding his sturdy defense. Quiet anger seethed in the debris. “I wasn’t given the carefree path you trod. My duties led me elsewhere, and I intend to see them through.”

  “Straight into misery.”

  “And how would you know?”

  “Because I see the same desire to break free that I have inside of you.” Flinging the heavy drape of hair back over her shoulder, she turned away from him and stared across the field. He heard the sharp intakes of breath and slow hiss of release.

  Crickets chirped their song in a nearby bush, their cadence a lonely sound that penetrated the heavy mugginess drowning the air. The call was answered by another chirping of restless legs, and another, and another until the night filled with the crickets’ mournful tune.

  Finally, Gwyn spoke. “If you could do one thing, anything in the whole world, what would it be?” Her voice was low and thick like smoke curling around him.

  She didn’t understand. Could never understand. But the more she pushed, the harder it was for him to keep her locked out. Determined thing, she was. What happened when she pushed so far that there was no going back? Would she laugh at his longing to live a simple life raising horses, not for military usage, but for the simple pleasure the beautiful creatures brought? Or worse, would she find him lacking and turn away?

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. This is my world.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with dreaming, William. If I didn’t dream, I wouldn’t be here.” She whipped around, a glare pulling her delicate eyebrows together. “And don’t give me cheek about how I shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

  He snorted. “You haven’t listened to me yet. It’d be a waste of my breath.”

  She stepped to him. Slivers of moonlight bathed her skin. “What are you so afraid of?”

  His pulse throbbed. Less than an arm’s length away, if he just reached out … “I hardly know myself.”

  “The man who plans every detail? I doubt that.”

  “Then prove to me how wrong I am.” He moved forward, leaving a hairsbreadth between them. “Tell me what it is that I’m afraid of.”

  Lips parted, her shallow breaths gripped him with longing. “You wear those captain’s bars like armor. One day, they will fail to protect you.”

  She spun on her heel, but he caught her elbow and pulled her back. Her frantic heart beat against his chest. His eyes fell to her mouth. “Why not now?”

  He claimed her lips with an urgency that sent waves of heat through him. Restraint fled as he wrapped his arms around her. He caressed her back, pulling her closer until her warmth melted into him. Her lips parted on a gasp, and he couldn’t stop from tasting the sweetness that had long tempted him. His hand moved to the back of her neck, angling her head. She shivered as he brushed his fingers through her dark hair. Heavy and wet, water droplets slipped between his fingers.

  Her fingers curled into him, her mouth molding under his in sweet release. Her frantic heartbeat pounded against his chest, coaxing his pulse to match hers. Her hands roamed over his shoulders to curl around his neck, scorching the sensitive skin beneath her smooth palms.

  He traced the gentle curve of her mouth, brushing his lips along her jaw and ear. She sighed softly. Desire trilled in his blood as he swept back to meet her lips once more. It seared him like a white-hot poker, sharp and true to his core until he felt nothing beyond the woman in his arms.

  And then she was gone.

  Pressing a shaking hand to her mouth, Gwyn whirled away, leaving him cold and confused.

  “Nice going, Romeo.” Roland leaned against a tree, shaking his head. “In all my experience, I’ve learned there are two people in the ranks that you do not want to rile. The cook and the medic. Thankfully, MacDonald is a Scot and doesn’t offend easily, but her, well, just pray you don’t get a splinter.”

  William gouged a hand through his hair. Curses leaped over his tongue. “Glad you caught the show.”

  “Only the finale.” Hands in his pockets, Roland pushed off the tree with a grin. “About time you got on with it. You wanted to. She’s wanted you to.”

  “Get all that by the way she stormed off, did you?”

  “The pangs of yearning and blossoming affection are obvious to even those with a blind eye. You two hit everyone between the eyes.”

  More like she was gearing up to punch him between the eyes. And not with blossoms. Still, the sigh from her soft lips hinted at the desire spiraling deep within her. A desire he had stirred. “Is there a reaso
n you’re prowling in the bushes, other than looking for cheap thrills at my expense?”

  “Our fifteen minutes are up. In case you hadn’t noticed.” With a wink, Roland strolled away whistling “Any Time’s Kissing Time.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Goodbye, life. Goodbye, flight school. Goodbye, traveling the world. Gwyn kicked a rock into a dried mud patch on the side of the road and continued with her list. Goodbye, breeches. Goodbye, autos. Hello, horses. She stopped to snap a twig under her heel. William paused and glanced over his shoulder before continuing on their march.

  And what of the things she’d gain by giving into him? Into his kiss? It certainly wasn’t a promise of any kind. A flare of passion from a man long at war perhaps. And yet … the way he held her, tilting her mouth to meet his, tracing the curves of her lips with exquisite tenderness and hunger.

  She stumbled as heat trembled down her legs at the memory. She’d read about stolen kisses and their power from Guinevere and Lancelot, Heathcliff and Cathy, but to find herself in a man’s arms for the first time was like floating in the most incredible dream. And the most confusing.

  “All right there, lass?”

  Gwyn jumped at the sound of MacDonald’s voice. He loomed over her, reddish eyebrows drawn together.

  “Fine, yes,” she said. “Pebble underfoot.”

  “Keep moving,” William called over his shoulder.

  “The lass had a bumble.”

  William stopped and turned. A warm breeze flowed over the brown fields and ruffled through his hair. “Is she … are you all right?”

  Gwyn tilted her chin up, embarrassment rushing to her cheeks. It was the first time he’d spoken directly to her in over a day. “Just a rock in the road. Press on.”

  “Do you need to rest?”

  The embarrassment heated to annoyance. “Certainly not.”

  His mouth opened, but he shut it and resumed the trek. Broad shoulders taut, back straight as a board, and arms stiff at his sides, he was a soldier on a mission.

  A heavy sigh rumbled in Gwyn’s chest. Two days ago he hadn’t been a soldier. He’d been a man who found her desirable. And she’d pushed him away.